Brazil: a country of jangled nerves

As the World
Cup opens, few Brazilians are heading for the beach to samba: behind the
stereotype is a country which has accumulated a perfect storm of social and
economic insecurities.

Round ball or square meal? Street art that went viral in BrazilJust a few
years ago, all the headlines coming out of Brazil were positive.

Huge
oilfields had been discovered off the country’s coast, suggesting it would take
its place among the world’s top producers. With Russia, India and China, Brazil
was one of the BRICs—an economy to watch. Millions had been lifted out of
poverty and its cash-transfer programme, Bolsa
Familia,was seen as a model for
tackling inequality.

A country
blessed with resources was led by a president known universally as “Lula”,
whose very life-story—escaping poverty in the arid north-east—seemed to reflect
that promise. However popular he was at home, not many Brazilian politicians
grab the international limelight; yet his US counterpart, Barack Obama, saluted
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva as “my man”.

Brazil was
opening embassies, offering solutions (not always welcomed) to international
problems and pushing its long-held ambition for a permanent seat on the United
Nations Security Council. As the icing on the cake, it seemed, Brazil was
chosen to host the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics.

Uncertain

Fast forward
to 2014, with the world’s top football tournament about to open, and one finds a
much more uncertain country.

For a start,
in a place often seen as the spiritual home of football, there has been a
sometimes-simmering, sometimes-blazing resentment over the cost of staging the
World Cup. Many promised infrastructure prospects were not delivered on time
and delays in finishing the stadia were seen as embarrassingly emblematic of domestic
corruption and bureaucracy.

Perhaps it
is because Brazilians’ expectations had been raised so much that they seem so
disappointed with so many things. Angst-ridden parents vent their frustrations over
the quality of education available to their children: the less well-off must
make do with poorer schools, they say, while the rich have access to private
education and those given a leg up have an easier path through free third-level
colleges to qualifications and job prospects.

The health
system struggles to meet basic needs and in many hospitals conditions are
terrible with long queues. In the shanty-towns, drug dealers carry arms that
wouldn’t look out of place in a war zone and around 50,000 people die violent
deaths each year. The better off live behind security gates and high walls,
some travelling in bullet-proof cars.

Economic
growth of over 7 percent in 2010 has slowed to around 2 percent and politicians
across the spectrum are mostly regarded with contempt. Brazil will choose a new
president later this year and while Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s anointed successor,
seems likely to win re-election, her lead in the polls has slipped. The main
opposition candidates, Aecio Neves and Eduardo Campos, are not making huge
strides but between now and October they will be chasing hard.

Discontent

Almost
exactly a year ago, more than a million Brazilians took to the streets to show
their discontent about a wide range of problems, from corruption to increases
in public-transport fares.

The protests
have diminished and have become less spontaneous, with more focused political
groups—among them homeless and indigenous campaigners—making specific demands. Meanwhile,
the presence of Black Bloc protesters with an anarchist agenda has led to
confrontation in a society where the police easily resort to force, sometimes
blatantly excessive.

Heavy hand: policing a demonstration at the Confederations Cup. Fernando Enrique C de Oliveira / Flickr. Some rights reserved.The
government would say to all this that overall there have been huge strides—and
no one would argue that running a country of continental proportions and 200m
people could be easy. Billions of dollars are being set aside for projects
linked to urban mobility, transport and airport modernisation. Jobs have been
created and tourism given a shot in the arm. World Cup visitors will not take
away these projects in their suitcases and the legacy will remain for the
Brazilian people, says Rousseff.Brazilians have
not been painting the streets yellow and green to mark the World Cup with
anything like the fervour of previous tournaments. They haven’t lost the
passion for an event their country has won more often than any other but the
vast expenditure and emerging questions about mismanagement and inflated
spending have left a bad taste. And in Rio the long-promised clean-up of pollution
in the beautiful Guanabara Bay, which
the government now says will not be realised as promised, heralds more
problems with the Olympics.

In addition,
to confront a shortage of doctors, thousands of Cuban medics were invited to
plug gaps in the country’s health system, in the teeth of opposition from the
medical establishment. And, in the country’s most high-profile corruption case,
the Supreme Court, led by the feisty Joaquim Barbosa (one of few black Brazilians to reach the highest level of
society), jailed more than 20 politicians, including leading members of
the ruling Workers’ Party—a riposte of sorts to those who say Brazil is synonymous
with impunity.

Ill at ease

Even so, the
World Cup kicks off in a country ill at ease with itself, puzzling a watching international
community which associates it with the “beautiful game”.

Noting that Jerome
Valcke of Fifa was travelling around in a bullet-proof car with police escort, one
Brazilian newspaper asked him if he was afraid of being attacked. And there
will be a heavy presence of police and soldiers on the streets throughout the
tournament.

Tear gas and
confrontation marred the Confederations Cup, the warm-up competition last year
in Brazil. It seems hard to imagine that trouble can be avoided this time round
either, although the scale is hard to predict—small and controllable, the government
will certainly be hoping. It is trying to lance some of the most painful
political boils, reportedly reaching out to include the homeless movement in a
major programme of public house-building.

A stellar
performance by the national team may well lift the public mood. But, spurred on
by social media, Brazilians are debating their problems and their future more
profoundly than at any time since democracy replaced military dictatorship in
1985.

Undoubtedly
deeply proud of their country, they are equally frustrated by its failings and
seem unconvinced that anyone is offering the right answers. Long after the
World Cup is over, that discussion will continue—and many Brazilians have already
shown that, if the answers are inadequate, they have the determination to take
the argument to the streets.

About the author

Gary Duffy
is executive editor for the BBC’s
Brazilian service, BBC Brasil, in São Paulo. The views expressed are his
own.

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